


Save Points

by GrayJay



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Darkest Timeline, Everything is terrible, Future, days of future past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 19:25:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1719872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrayJay/pseuds/GrayJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you’re ice when they get to you. Sometimes you’ve spent everything, and the air is drier than desert, and those times are the worst; but someone’s got to buy Kitty and Bishop those last few seconds, and time doesn’t come cheap these days.</p><p>**Minor spoilers for <em>X-Men: Days of Future Past</em>**</p>
            </blockquote>





	Save Points

This is how you die: Ignited, impaled, shattered, crushed underfoot, melted, evaporated, eviscerated. You hear the Sentinels take out the others one at a time, or in twos, or all at once, until you’re the only one left. Sometimes you’re ice when they get to you. Sometimes you’ve spent everything and the air is drier than desert, and those times are the worst; but someone’s got to buy Kitty and Bishop those last few seconds, and time doesn’t come cheap these days.

This is what you remember: Bishop snapping awake in squat after squat, telling you it’s time to run again. Running has become routine, and you try not to think about the Bobbys who don’t run, the ones who exist for just long enough to fight and die so you can keep going. The ghosts of all those Bobbys and Clarices and Piotrs and Jameses trail you from mountaintop temples to gutted high-rises, criss-crossing across the globe, and you think it’s got to be getting awfully crowded by now.

“How many times does this make?” Clarice asks. Her tally is a knotted string that she fingers like prayer beads before going into a fight. You and Kitty sew yours into the lining of your jackets: a little tick of thread for every ghost you’ve left behind. James notches his holster; Piotr uses a corner in the back of the tattered sketchbook he no longer draws in. Bobby Da Costa melts numbers into a sliver of steel, scrap from a fight you actually remember, the one where a Sentinel swatted Sam out of the sky like a cat catching a bird and he burned in his own blast field.

You don’t know if Bishop keeps count.

Sometimes you think your nightmares must be memories pushing back through: melting, shattering, suffocating with lungs full of shrapnel. In the dreams, sometimes you all fight; other times you’re alone, and when the Sentinels finally reach you, you understand it’s because all the others are already dead. Sometimes you watch Kitty die, and then you know you’re dreaming, because if she died you’d be gone for good, and no other Bobby would come up to take your place. 

Kitty sleeps phased, curled through you like a clipping error on games you haven’t played in a decade--or play every day, depending on how you look at it: fight, die, restart, and only Bishop knows the difference. Sometimes she wakes you up because you’ve gone ice, fighting Sentinels in your sleep. On those nights, once you’re thawed, she stays solid, and you cling to each other in the dark, wishing wordlessly on the ghosts of everyone you were.


End file.
